[GSoC] MacPorts Usage Statistics

[Derek Ingrouville]

Hello MacPorts Developers!

I'm a final year CS undergrad and I would like to work with you this summer.

I've been using macports for just about 2 years now so naturally I was
interested when I saw that you guys were participating in gsoc again.
I feel like its time to give back to the open source community and
macports seems a great place to start.

After reading the macports-users list the question of OS stats came up
and Scott Webster mentioned Debian's popcon package. This got me
thinking that it might be useful to the project to be able to collect
anonymous OS data and see what ports people are installing and using
most often. Having this data can help with determining what
hardware/software configurations to target for testing purposes.

Due to privacy concerns the opt-in model seems the best way to go.
Users opt-in to the program by installing the port. It would also be
nice to let users choose what sort of data they would like to
contribute though a configuration file. A default set of options will
be enabled which hopefully provide of good balance of privacy to
usefulness.

I'm interested in working on either porting Debian's popcon or
developing a similar package for macports.

What I would like to know primarily is if there is any interest in
having this developed. If not I'd definitely be interested in working
on one of the proposed project ideas, specifically one of dependency
related projects (or a combination thereof).

Thanks,
Derek